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Indie Author Spotlight, Episode 37
Hello! Jennifer Martin here! I'm a budding short story writer and a new volunteer at The Writer's Workout as well as a recent graduate. I have learned that breaking into the literary world can be daunting feat and so I am taking every opportunity to meet new and interesting people in the literary community, like today's guest Ani King.
Make sure to check out their website and socials, which are linked below, so you don't miss out on any of their future work. I was very pleased with the opportunity to meet Ani. I know you will be too.
Hi Ani! Thanks so much for meeting with me today. Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Hello from mid-Michigan! As I am writing, it is a beautiful, sunny June morning, with blue skies and just enough cloud cover. Everything is lush and green, and there is a fat squirrel staring at me through the sliding glass door. I mention the place where I live and am from first because it features so prominently in my writing and has been an enormous influence on how I approach setting and place and character. Even when I wrote my very first New Kids on the Block fanfiction at the tender age of eleven, it was set in good old northern Michigan, and my point of view character waxed on about trees for a solid two pages. I’m also queer, gender noncompliant autistic person with ADHD, with a fascination for liminal and outside spaces, and all of these things come up in my writing in some way. Most of my personality centers around art and literature, and my very favorite thing in the world is to talk with people about things we’ve read or are reading.
Tell us about your writing style.
I primarily write literary speculative fiction, though I have occasionally written pieces that don’t have a speculative element, but even those tend to have a sense of oddness to them, or at least I hope so! Most of my work uses a very close lens with narrative filtered through character to create what I hope are relatable stories around family, connection, and identity. In that vein, I write a lot of flash and micro fiction that straddles the already very thin line between prose and prose poetry. I really enjoy the way you can play with form, function, and punctuation in very low word counts because you’re not over-stretching reader tolerance.
Tell us about a project you’re proud of and link it.
My first collection of flash fiction, Family Night, is coming out with Mason Jar Press in October 2026! I am so proud to see these stories come together thematically; when I first started putting the collection together it was hard to see them all fitting a unified theme. There are stories in here with a base in mythology, such as “The Minotaur’s Wife Makes a Map,” which is a sapphic love story where the characters are trapped in a labyrinth of heteronormative metaphor. The title story, “Family Night,” isn’t speculative at all in nature, and travels through a moment where a family patriarch’s dementia, racism, and homophobia make spending time together challenging, but there’s an unexpected moment of tender connection with his daughter’s girlfriend. At the end of the world, in “The 250th Annual Radishtown Day Summer Parade,” a big family has their annual cookout on a porch that’s been repurposed as a pontoon boat. Bringing these together and putting them in order felt like building a family relationship playlist.
As a side note, I had a ton of fun making zines for this past AWP that featured a line drawing of the cover, a bit of info on Family Night, and a story called “Fastball,” originally published in Fractured Lit.
Spill the tea, what are you currently working on?
Right now, I’m working on two larger projects. The first is a multimedia collection of stories focused on a character called Horsegirl and her neurodivergent girlfriend, Tattletale. I’m using various types of visual art and literary forms (paper collage, indigo printing, poetry) to tell a love story that is not only for the characters, but for my queer, weird teen self.
My other project is a novel in flash about a deer obsessed boy who disappears into the woods for a period of time and emerges partially transformed into a deer. The story is framed by a handwritten and illustrated journal about white-tailed deer that Deerboy finds when he’s very young. Both of these also focus on queerness, identity, and the role family plays in those spaces, which you can probably tell are recurring themes in my work. There are pieces published from both of these projects for folks who might like a sneak peek.
What is your biggest/best piece of advice for other Indie Authors?
You really can’t write for everyone, so write for yourself first. For a long time, I tried to write stories that seemed to follow themes and ideas that people liked or were popular, but that ultimately didn’t resonate with me in the same way my own work does now—I think that was evident in how the stories came out which was… fine, but only fine. Choosing an audience, and especially one that includes me, has made such a difference in how I connect with the narrative, the language, the intent, and I think that makes it possible to be more vulnerable in what goes on the page. For me, this matters because I think a lot of readers also make deeper connections with stories that have a sense of vulnerability in them, it makes the characters and the situations feel real in the moment.
Who is your favorite Indie Author?
I have so many favorites, and it’s always really hard to pick one to highlight, but Melissa Llanes Brownlee is someone I love as a writer and a person and friend. All of her work has such a bold voice, and her ability to transform place into character while telling a complete and often devastating narrative in just a few hundred words is incredible. If you want masterclass examples of writing small to tell big stories, then you really need to read Melissa’s work. I‘m a huge fan of all three of her currently available books and am now doing a third re-read of Bitter Over Sweet, a collection of linked short stories themed around native life in Hawaii, the impact of colonization and tourism, and told through a primary lens on Tita at various ages and stages.
Melissa’s website: https://www.melissallanesbrownlee.com/
Where can someone find your work, social presence, etc. drop some links.
If you want to know more about Ani, check out their 2nd interview over on The Writer's Workout Substack - https://writersworkout.substack.com/p/ani-king-second-interview
Interested in being interviewed for one of our Indie Author Spotlights? Click here to contact us!
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